Evident from the following, Stephen Lam, Secretary of Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, has told every other associations asking to broaden or rationalize the electorate base of functional constituencies to "go home." So, this only makes his proposal (now passed into law!) to include certain association in the IT FC even more glaringly unorthodox in the way it was handled.

Who can possibly interfere and tell Mr Lam what to do, despite his insistence that there be no "substantial changes?" You tell me.

Proposal on broadening the electorate base of Engineering and Information Technology Functional Constituencies

In 2005, with the endorsement of the Council of the Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (HKIE), I made a proposal on including Graduate Members and Associate Members of the HKIE in the Engineering Functional Constituency electorate and Associate Members in the IT Functional Constituency electorate respectively. Unfortunately, it did not fit in with the scope of the amendments proposed by the government at that time. Recently, I wrote to Mr Stephen Lam, Secretary for Constitutional and Mainland Affairs, asking him to revisit the subject. Without adopting my proposal, Mr Lam indicated in his reply that there should be no substantial changes to the traditional functional constituencies, which is the government's general policy position in the light of the new election arrangement in 2012 LegCo election. Without giving up, I wrote to the Chairmen of both Associate Members Committee and Young Members Committee of the HKIE to bring their attention to the forthcoming meeting of the Bills Committee on Chief Executive Election (Amendment) Bill 2010 and Legislative Council (Amendment) Bill 2010, of which I am a member. The meeting on 15 January 2011 was to receive views from deputations and individuals on the Bill.

IT360 #23: 2011-2012 Budget Survey 財政預算案問卷調查

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Internet gurus gather in Hong Kong

For two weeks in February, the best and brightest of the Internet world gathered in Hong Kong for what turned out to be the largest Internet community gathering in the Asia Pacific region -- APRICOT-APAN 2011.

APRICOT stands for Asia Pacific Regional Internet Conference on Operational Technologies, and APAN means Asia Pacific Advanced Network. The former (APRICOT) is the annual conference of the Asia Pacific Internet Association (APIA), and has since 1996 become the biggest event for Internet service providers, public network builders and technologists, while the latter (APAN) is made up of national laboratories and universities researchers who need to build and maintain high-speed networks for their research and development activities in all kinds of different applications, including medicine and other scientific research.

APRICOT was first held in Hong Kong back in 1997, attended by no more than a few hundred people, who gathered to share knowledge in the early days of commercial Internet services in Asia. Obviously, Hong Kong and Asia have come a long way since then -- back in 1996, we had more Internet users in Hong Kong than all of mainland China. Today, there are an estimated 500 million Netizens on the mainland.

This is the first time APRICOT-APAN was held concurrently, and the event was successful beyond our wildest imaginations -- over 1,500 participants from more than 60 countries around the world, including not only Asia Pacific but Europe, the Americas and Africa. It's especially important for us to showcase Hong kong to the world for our unique presence in this region in terms of network deployment, service excellence and regulatory openness, and with APRICOT-APAN, I believe we have done just that.

We were also fortunate to have Dr Vint Cerf -- one of the founders of the Internet and Google's Chief Internet Evangelist -- and Dr Ya-Qin Zhang, Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Head of Microsoft's Asia Pacific Research Lab, as our opening keynote speakers. I've had the privilege of knowing Vint for many years, and he has always been like a kind father to all of us in the global Internet community, working on common forums such as the Internet Society (Vint was the founding chairperson) and ICANN (where he served as Chairman).

Quality guests

During his APRICOT keynote, Dr Cerf told us about his interplanetary Internet project: he has been working with NASA for years to develop a next-generation protocol to handle the delays and interruptions brought by long-distance and hostile environments. Nobody knew where the Internet was headed back in the late 1960s when it was conceived by Vint and others in a US Department of Defense R&D project, and Vint humbly said that it was the team effort of many to make the Internet like what it is now. And it will be users and developers like us who will take the Internet to its next phase -- especially for us in Asia -- the continent now with the biggest chunk of users.

While we as the organizers -- Internet Society Hong Kong and DotAsia Organization -- were glad with a turnout that exceeded our goal, we hoped that local attendance would be higher. Neither APRICOT and APAN are primarily commercial in nature -- it isn't another Consumer Electronic Show or some IT trade fair or Computer Festival. This unfortunately reinforces our concern that our industry in Hong Kong is rather short-sighted -- so how do we tell our own government to be more visionary than ourselves?

We as the organizers can only set the forums for Vint and other technology visionaries to meet with young people under the Asia Pacific Next Generation (APNG) program, and hope that our post-90s youngsters can be inspired to new heights of innovation and creativity.

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Forgiveness, Even If You Don't Love Me Anymore

First of all, let me say that I object the use of violence as a means for practically any purpose in society. But of course, it is important to distinguish between violence with hooliganism or just plain old heckling. Moreover, I am of the opinion that the use of physical confrontation as a tactic for achieving political goal is generally counter-productive.

However, having said that, a couple nights ago, after hearing about the alleged attack on the Chief Executive from the late news, I couldn't help but put this on my Facebook page: “A true leader does not divert attention from facing the issues, resolving the conflict, and overcoming the discontent, by going to the emergency room.”

All we have been hearing from the Chief Executive and other senior government officials has been how they conthe violence, and how the Chief Secretary is looking for ways to stop the confrontation and throwing of objects in the legislative council chamber by LSD legislators. OK, but did our senior government officials stop and think about why are people resorting to such behaviors? They have the right to criticize the use of violence or physical confrontation as tactics, but at the same time they must also step up and deal with the problem.

For example, when I heard Secretary of Development Carrie Lam saying on a radio program last weekend that she believed the use of such physical confrontation was not conducive to monitoring and improving governance, I really wanted to ask her, so, what would be conducive? What would it take for those you shun to get your attention? Or are you trying to say, you behave yourselves first, stop criticizing, and only then, maybe I will give you a few candies.

Sadly, I have to conclude that our Government strives on divisiveness as its means to govern, and has no interest in building real consensus.

When I saw the reactions on Facebook the night of the alleged attack on our Chief Executive, I cannot help but notice and wonder, when was the last time a “victim of violence” actually received more ridicule and criticism than sympathies? The writings are indeed on the wall. When will our Government wake up?

I also cannot help but think of the late US President Ronald Reagan, who survived an assassination attempt in 1981. When he was in the emergency room after being shot in the chest, he actually joked to his wife Nancy, “Honey, I forgot to duck.” A simple sense of humor that lightened up the matter and helped his loved one and indeed the whole country get on with the healing.

But not only that our Chief Executive lacks the intelligence to laugh at himself, he has chosen to play the role of the victim of violence, make a small matter bigger than it ought to be, instead of rising to the occasion to bring unity and harmony to society, like a leader should. I would hope so much that our Chief Executive would have the grace to stand up and say, “I forgive this young man, and I don't want to see his future tarnished by a criminal offense, and so I will urge against pressing charges. In fact, I will call this young man myself and invite him to my house, and let's talk over our difference. I will not promise that I can do everything he asks, but I want to start by listening first.”

Unfortunately we all know that this will not happen here. Or else, Hong Kong would not be in the dire straits we are already in.

So I couldn't help but put this second status update on my Facebook page that night: “Be a man, shrug it off, and you unite us. Be a wimp, make a big fuss, and you divide society.”

And, finally, I like to dedicate this song by Don Henley, “The Heart Of The Matter” (1990), to our Chief Executive, and ask him to listen closely to the lyrics that goes,